'Glee': Ryan Murphy on handling Cory Monteith's death on the show

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“Glee” has to face the death of Cory Monteith at some point in the upcoming Season 5. Now, the show’s executive producer, Ryan Murphy, has opened up about how “Glee” will tackle the death of one of its key players.

Monteith’s character of Finn Hudson will be revealed to have died in episode 3 of the season. Coming after two Beatles-themed “fun and optimistic” episodes, this revelation will definitely be something of a shock to the “Glee” world. Murphy explained to Deadline.com how the show will handle the situation.

“The hard part for all of us is that the past week we’ve been hold up writing the memorial episode,” he explained in the interview. “There were a lot of things that we had to decide — how are we going to deal with his death? At one point, we were going to have his character die after an accidental drug overdose — that was something we had considered. But we have decided that we’re not going to have him pass from that.”

In fact, it sounds like Finn’s cause-of-death will not be a part of the memorial episode. “What we’re doing in the episode is we are not telling you yet — or maybe not at all — how that character died,” Murphy said. “The idea being, how somebody died is interesting and maybe morbid, but we say very early on in the episode, ‘This episode is about a celebration of that character’s life.’ It might be weird for some people, but it felt really exploitative to do it any other way.”

Now that he and the “Glee” team have gotten through creating the episode, Ryan Murphy seems pleased with the result. “I think it turned out to be a lovely tribute, and it’s a very heartfelt look at how young people grieve.”

Production of the show will go on hiatus once FOX approves the episode, with Murphy saying that a few weeks will be necessary to “get our heads together.” The future of “Glee” beyond this episode remains a mystery.